Wednesday, March 16, 2016

The Ultimate Love/Hate relationship

Daylight savings time began this week.

This is always so difficult for me. Springing forward doesn't work with my biological clock. Because despite the fact that the "civilized world" has decided to change time, my REM sleep never gets the memo. It always takes at least a week if not more to get used to things. Waking up in the middle of my dreams is not ideal.
And I'm not the only one who has trouble. On Monday when I got home at the "right" time, the Cats had not received the memo either. When I walked in the front door, there were two very confused kitties blinking at me from the couch. I clearly was home much too early and it took a few minutes for them to believe it was true. But as soon as the coin dropped for Jacques that this also meant he could go out sooner - the confusion vanished.

The perks of time change though, well - here in the North East - they are a good incentive to acceptance. I get to come home and have enough daylight to do significant gardening.
It is clean-up time. The weather feels like it is ready to stay spring which means gardens need to be prepared. On Sunday I significantly pruned the front rose and got rid of a lot of dead wood. Today I decided to clean the beds of old debris and leaves. I also finally decided to get rid of the chains around some of the growths on my property. According to the Els, one of the former owners decided everyone was going to steal her plants. So she wrapped chains around them. I found them all over the place. Until now - I just left them. Why? I didn't have anything to cut them with. Then today I thought I should ask Mr. El if he had bolt cutters I could borrow. Well of course he does! And he loaned them to me immediately. He even knew what I was talking about and said if I found anymore, I should just let him know and he'd come cut them for me.
Cleanup has revealed some of the duds in the garden. Here are a bunch of dud-daffodils. Of this entire bunch there were only two blooms! Time for them all to go. I am starting to wonder if the daffodils I purchase at Home Depot aren't somehow GMO engineered to be done blooming after a few years. 'Cause in nature the daffodils should bloom for years and years.
The back section of daffodils has had no problem blooming this year. I'm pretty sure I fertilized them quite seriously last year though. Note to self: keep a close eye on this section for the next few years and see how the blooms progress (or not).
Another benefit of daylight savings time is that I can do a load of laundry when I get home and it might actually dry before it gets dark!

While this is not significant laundry, it is airplane cotton for work, none-the-less it is nice to be able to plop it into the wash and have it dry before dark in an evening.

Jacques of course, thoroughly approves of the daylight savings time.
Not only does he get to spend more time outside in the daylight, but the possibility that Staff will also be out with him is quite high. This of course makes cats happy.

The garlic is growing in leaps and bounds. It is almost 8inches tall.
And then I found some beautiful things:

Chinese lanterns tossed into the garden to re-seed in the new year, had perforated to a skeleton.

About Me

i am a 42 year old ~ native californian ~ pronounce my name tar-a, not terra ~ moved to Philadelphia to go to grad school ~ ride my bike to work ~ am an artist, teacher, and book conservator ~ two cats Jacques and Swee'pea who will make many appearances I'm sure